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Wednesday, July 23, 2014

DIY Striped Straw Necklaces

A few weeks ago, my friends at Party Pail sent me a challenge: choose some of their party supplies and make a craft project with my kids. I did my best Barney Stinson impression when I replied, "Challenge accepted!" Although, I had absolutely no idea how I'd meet this challenge. I mean, there are only so many variations on paper plate masks, right?

A few days later, something reminded me of these paper bead necklaces my sister and I used to make from old magazine pages. Basically, you cut the pages into long, thin triangles, and wind each triangle around a toothpick and glue it. When it dries, you have a colorful tube-shaped bead. We made hundreds of those beads. It was my goal not to let any magazine go wasted. I bet my mom loved having bags of those paper beads allllll over the house. Twenty-some-odd years later, I'm still making things…so I guess nothing really changes.

When I thought of those beads, I realized it was the solution to my crafting challenge: Let's just cut up some striped straws to make tube-shaped beads. It's simple and colorful, and kid-friendly. So these necklaces were born of a crafting challenge combined with a memory of my childhood hobby (which may have seemed like hoarding at one point).

Want to make some necklaces of your own? You probably have most everything you need hanging around the house. Yarn, tape (not pictured), scissors (also not pictured), wooden beads (we used a combination of these round beads and these cube beads), a handful of striped straws (Party Pail gave us the orange, pink and green ones for this project), and a clip of some sort (or anything else you can attach to the end of the yard to keep the beads from falling off).

Step 1: Cut up the striped straws. I didn't measure exactly, but each straw made about 10 beads.

Step 2: Tape one end of the yarn like the end of a shoelace. This makes threading easier for small fingers. Next, attach the clip to the opposite end of the yarn to keep beads from sliding off while you're working.

Step 3: Start stringing your necklace. Charlotte loved making up different patterns and she named each design. One was called "cotton candy" another was "pink lemonade" and one was the "unicorn necklace," of course. Once you're done beading the necklace, tie the ends together with a square knot, and cut off all but about .5" excess yarn. You can easily tuck the ends into one of the straws to hide them.

That's it. Now throw on a necklace (or six) and hit the town. We made necklaces for our stuffed animals, for our friends and neighbors and we still have plenty of supplies to pull out for our next play date.